6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ambitious narrative & Very intricate images/camera work, December 18, 1999
This review is from: Violence at Noon [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Seeing there's only one review for this precious film so far, and a rather brief one at that, perhaps I could give my two cents on the experience of Violence at Noon.
While the film does use a lot of jump cuts and refuses to give an easy, linear narrative - in a way similar to many French new wave films, as the box helpfully points out - its strength and seductiveness lie in the subject matter.
Oshima has said that, in this film, he wanted to explore the desire-shame complex men have in the act of sex. The result is less straightforward, as the story becomes one of detective hunt in the Present (Who's the Phantom Killer going around in daylight, raping and killing women?), and Past (the 4 main protagonists were members of a failed socialist commune, steeped in love and idealism.)
On a personal note, I really enjoyed the challenge of piecing together the relationships among the characters, the flashbacks and the on-going police pursuit. The images are inventive to say the least: using high contrast photography, the overexposure seems to tell the story of 4 people whose memories threaten to evaporate as painfully as their youthful ideals and love for each other. The end result is a bitter and strange one, as I don't feel Oshima's feelings about rape as a socially constructed pathology of the male does justice to the brutalization of the female. Yet the film seems to point to the complicitous role of women who allow the rapist animal to go on with his business. A very difficult and rewarding film if you stick with it.
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